“Come on, man. Stop being a pussy.”
“I can’t believe you had the balls to do that!”
Both phrases include analogies for human genitalia. One is female. The other is male. One is honorable. The other is weak.
I never understood why a woman’s vagina has become the universal symbol for weakness instead of a man’s testicles.
Do people realize how fragile balls are? You could flick them just a bit too hard, and you have a man brought to his knees, writhing in pain. There’s virtually no way of protecting them unless you wear a cup. It’s almost as if fate put them there as a twisted joke. “I’m just gonna put these highly sensitive baby-making sacks in the most inconvenient place possible and let them just hang there. Oh, did I mention they’re highly sensitive? Good luck.”
Also, let’s analyze the well-known expression, “Grab life by the balls.” My interpretation of that phrase is, “Take control of your life.” With the language in this statement, though, it’s pretty easy to infer that you can take control of your life by grabbing life’s metaphorical balls. To me, that displays just how weak these “balls” are. If all I have to do is grab life’s testicles in order to do what I want, that seems pretty weak. Does it not?
On a serious note, though, it makes no sense that we consider a man’s anatomy as the superior, stronger symbol.
Do you realize how strong and durable vaginas are?
During penetrative sex, the vaginal walls literally expand. Our vaginas are able to physically alter their dimensions in order to accommodate for whatever is being inserted into them (as long as it’s safe and consensual)!
On the topic of expanding vaginas, women push living, breathing human beings out of their vaginas. Every single day! Since the beginning of time! You wouldn’t be here unless a woman pushed you out of her vaginal canal. (Though there are also many women who must undergo cesareans, which are just as badass as vaginal births.)
In addition, vaginas release blood every single month—except nine months out of the year if you become pregnant—for decades.
We’re going to do some quick math, here. The average bleeding period during a woman’s menstrual cycle is between 3 to 5 days. Girls typically have their first period around the age of 12, though there are cases in which girls are much younger than 12 or well into their teenage years by the time they experience their first period. (Mine was a few weeks before turning 11, and I had a friend who hadn’t gotten hers until she was 16.) The average onset age for menopause is 50, and the time for menopause to come to an end can take anywhere from 2 to 8 years.
Therefore, if my calculations are correct, the average American woman spends about 40 to 46 years menstruating. That is 480 to 552 months of periods, with 3 to 5 days of every single one of those months bleeding. That is 1,440 to 2,760 days of our lives dedicated to releasing blood from our “pussies”.
If that isn’t the ultimate sign of strength, I don’t know what is.